The Experiment
by MrsCaffrey
Summary: "To anyone receiving this."... "Anyone at all..."..."We are out of our depths here."..."I think I can assume that our backup is either gone or too late."..."And so are our allies."..."So I send this final message out to bid my farewell. This is Agent... This is Phillip J. Coulson, over and out."
1. Chapter 1

"To anyone receiving this."

"..."

"Anyone at all..."

"..."

"We are out of our depths here."

"..." the static was like a death sentence, a roaring declaration that the mission was failing. He stared up at the falling object, grandiose and beautiful in all its destructive glory.

"I think I can assume that our backup is either gone or too late." he swallowed after uttering those words.

"..."

"And so are our allies."

"..."

"So I send this final message out to bid my farewell. This is Agent..." he coughed as he corrected himself. There was no need for a title anymore.

"This is Phillip J. Coulson, over and out."

* * *

The message died out in a pandemonium of noise depicting a scene of destruction, the crash of a newly acquired S.H.I.E.L.D helicopter that had but obliterated the radio the message was sent from, despite its durability meant to keep it intact in case of plane-crashes or fires. And speaking of fires, whatever had assisted this one, if it was jet fuel or something extraterrestrial, it had burned away all traces of the crew sent out check out the unidentified object in the desert of Nevada. Not a single piece of them remained, only shadows burnt into the ground, like pieces of coaled art.

"Are the shadows confirmed to be..." Nick Fury asked while walking between the remnants of this disaster.

"They are definitely human, sir." one of the recognisance scientists confirmed. What was her name again? While he knew that she grew up in Philadelphia, third child out of eight, a genius with an estimated IQ around 156, partial to steamed carrots over broccoli, he was a tad uncertain about her name. Anne? Annabelle? Amanda? Something beginning with A...

"Confirm their DNA-signatures to find out if this is indeed our people, and whoever, or whatever else they were fighting out here." Fury continued without letting her know about his line of thinking. Agent Coulson had risked his life to send this seemingly unimportant message of goodbye. By the look of things he had forfeited his life just to say something this scene should spell out perfectly clear. The whole thing reeked of uncertainty, and if there was something Nick Fury despised, it was not knowing what was really going on.

"Leave no stone unturned, no speck of dust unexamined. Our Agents were under attack, and unless we find out by whom we will be next on their list, and it won't be pretty!" he yelled to the accumulating masses of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents amassing around this crime-scene. How did he know this was an attack? For one, he knew there to have been six agents on this scene, but from what he could discern there were at least fifteen shadows. Even if by some coincidence every person made two shadows, that would not account for the three excess shadows that could be seen in the fray of the main blast, seemingly on their way towards the middle.

"This whole thing stinks." Agent May commented as she came walking up behind him, her arms crossed and a cold look of indifference plastered all over her face. Agent Melinda May, The Cavalry, one of the agents sent to assist Agent Coulson on his mission. She arrived too late, and her team was the one to first come across this scene.

"It sure does." Nick Fury concurred.

"It sure does..."

The desert stretched out far and wide around them, black cars spread out randomly and men in black busily setting up the field-camp needed to retrieve every speck of dust so that they with certainty could find out what transpired here.

* * *

ELSEWHERE

He opened his eyes with a start, would've sat up with equal hurry had it not been for his body being numb, unmovable against his every attempt. Was he dead? The lack of pain that should be there might suggest that. The lack of any general feeling, physical as well as psychological, might suggest the same. Even as he lay there, only being able to breathe, blink, and stare straight ahead, he felt strangely calm. Safe, even.

"I see that you have come to." a voice from somewhere commented. It was distinctly male, but other than that Agent Phillip J. Coulson was too delirious to even consider whether the voice was familiar, whether he'd heard the same voice before somewhere.

"Where are we?" another voice asked instead, female this time, calm and calculating, masking her fear with immaculate skill, though it clearly was there. She was much much more afraid than he was.

"A safe place. For now that is all you need to know." the first voice replied.

"Phil?" the female voice inquired. Phil? Wasn't..? Wasn't he sometimes called Phil? And wasn't her voice somewhat... familiar?

"Phil? Are you there?" the female asked again. She was probably in a similar state, unable to see more that a bluish white ceiling.

"I'm here." he replied. What was going on? This was not where he had been. There'd been an accident, hadn't there? Something involving a helicopter? And S.H.I.E.L.D. He was a shield agent. Of course he was. An agent on a mission where something had gone horribly wrong.

"Who else is here?" he continued asking. Somehow he realised, through the mist of his jumbled memories, that he likely was badly hurt. That he probably should be dead.

"Oh, there is only you, Mr Coulson. Only you and that faithful partner of yours, who refused to leave your side even as you were about to die. She is a very stubborn specimen indeed. My condolences for your teams, by the way." the male voice replied. He could sense the movement of the other, the sensation of fleeting body-heat grazing by.

"Now sleep, you will need your strength soon enough." the male continued, and the world was already starting to blur at the end of his sentence. There was a whimper, a last futile attempt of resistance coming from his roommate, the female he knew too well, the woman that always came to his rescue, even today. And he recalled her name just before sleep took over. Her name... Melinda May.


	2. Chapter 2

Falling rain, orange and deadly, accompanying something as deadly as a falling sun. All hope is lost, so even with the war unfolding like a crimson palette around you, you stare at the approaching doom, for a moment forgetting your fatigue, your open wounds, your obligations that involves the protection of the planet earth as you awe at the beauty of the fiery carcass of what was supposed to be your way out. Words leave your mouth, but you can't hear them. The furious roar of the flames lock everything else out. It is just you, and the falling rain, orange and deadly, becoming one as darkness envelopes everything. And that... is the end.

* * *

He woke up with a start, I could see as much. Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson. I counted the names and titles on my fingers, the number taking up my hand, studied a rather nasty flesh wound on my index finger that was getting infected and by now was attaining a rather sickening green yellow hue. Attaining. What a nice word. I really ought to write something using that word one time. Attaining... as for the flesh wound, most of my fingers had them. It was the unfortunate side effect of having my fingernails forcibly removed. The man groaned where he lay in the only bed in the room, was clearly just realising that he was in pain, soon also realising that he probably didn't have the faintest idea where he was.

I moved my gaze to the index finger again. Would the wise thing to do in this case be to press out the questionable looking liquid, or leave it be and hope for the best? Had the circumstances been optimal I would of course have gone for the former, but with our shared accommodations in their current state...

"Wha.. Where.. WHERE AM I?!" the man exclaimed, falling out of the bed in his hurried attempt to get out of it. I sighed.

"You are here." I replied, a mumble that may seem to be more of a loud thought than a statement meant to be heard by others. It still served a purpose, however, as it made him jump and whir around from his awkward sprawl. Thusly he was sitting up, eyes roaming his new scenery, likely the only one he would get in a good while. Cold concrete floors, polished to perfection upon a time, though now displaying a variety of questionable stains, dust bunnies, and less dust-related things generally smaller than an average grape. Our wonderful walls were no warmer, stealing even more heat away, and were adorned with rusting shackles all around, two sets per wall. My wrists were beautifully embellished by one set, long since chafing away all skin beneath them. The walls were rock, telling of our underground position, roughly carved and giving our surroundings a cavey feel, a feature the roof shared. Even so, the room had a sort of rectangular shape, and was exit-able through a heavy looking metal door, the exit-able part of it being contestable since it was locked shut from the outside. So here he was, Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson, sitting by a hospital bed that upon closer inspection would show clear signs of use, in a room only lit up by an old-schooly lantern better fit in the 1800s, accompanied by me, his beautiful haven't-washed-myself-or-brushed-my-hair-in-weeks roommate. At least I hoped it to be weeks. Time tended to run along with no clear signs of the sun to be detected anywhere, along with my lovely concierge Lukas, the guard currently guarding the very heavy door, and that never seemed to learn the concept of time-keeping with his clearly irregular visitations to check up on me.

"Can you hear me?" I zoned back to my new company, who by now had retorted to using slow and overly clear words.

"I'm not retarded, so you can leave that tone at the door." I commented dryly, my brows creeping closer to my eyes in indignation. He blinked at that, perhaps taken aback, but I felt that I had the upper right to feel insulted with the tone he sported just before.

"Where are we?" he asked then, switching his question from singular to plural in a clear attempt to appease me. Ah. Appease. Appease was a good word too. The letter A was really having a blast today.

"I already told you, you are here." I repeated. He was clearly not satisfied with the answer, but at the moment I had little else to provide. If here was Seattle, Bahamas, Beijing or Svartalfheim was currently beyond me.

"Are you alright?" I asked when he seemed to deflate ever so slightly. He was wondrously unharmed, the poor thing, at least from what I could see. Dressed in a suit more fit at a funeral than in a cell, only decorated by a fading yellowish purple handprint around his neck. All his fingernails remained where they were supposed to be, possibly even manicured a little. I would have to wait at least a few weeks before I even had anything to manicure, that depending on whether I got to keep my next set of nails in the first place. A manicure was definitely on my bucket list, though. He was looking at me oddly. Why was he looking at me oddly?

"How many are keeping us here?" he asked. Again with the "we".

"How many?" I cocked my head to the side, moved my legs so I sat in an impromptu lotus.

"Do you know?" he continued.

"No." I replied honestly.

"What kind of place is this then?" he inquired further.

"Are you sure you want to continue asking questions?" I asked back.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, if I never get to finish answering, and you only keep on asking, then I'll start forgetting what you want to know, and the information may be quite valuable." I explained.

"Finish answering? I thought you said you didn't know how many people are keeping us here." he smiled slightly, perhaps to be polite or perhaps because I amused him.

"As for the kind of place this is, you do not want to know. You only need to know that they are no allies of SHIELD." I said.

"How do you know about..."

"And here I thought I told you to stop asking so many questions, Mr. Agent Phillip Jason Coulson." I interrupted him.

"How do you..?" he tried again.

"Because the question you asked was the numbers of guards present at this facility, though the question you really wanted answered is: are there many enough?" I interrupted him again, allowed some leeway between this statement and the next in case he wanted to say something about my deduction. Instead he was eyeing me patiently, finally realising that silence would earn him his reward.

"And the answer to that question isn't a tally, but rather a two-sided choice, like heads or tails. Yes, I do believe there is an impressive amount of captors, but no, not enough." my face split up in a diabolical grin.

"Not nearly enough."


End file.
